Team India looked down and out in the third Test against Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground with more than a session to go on the last day. They had just 5 wickets in hand, one batsman playing with a torn hamstring, one in the dugout with a fractured hand, a bowling all-rounder out of form and suffering from back pain and three bowlers with questionable batting skills.
The feature of the Indian team in the Test series was that it kept finding heroes whenever they needed one and here, they found two. Hanuma Vihari batted close to 4 hours with a grade 2 tear in his hamstring while R Ashwin braved a terrible back injury and remained unbeaten on 39 playing 128 balls.
They smartly batted out the bowlers with Ashwin facing the spinner Nathan Lyon while Vihari taking on the pacers as he could not stretch to the spinner. Australia looked out of sorts during that period as they did not know what to do to break the partnership.
R Ashwin said on his YouTube channel, "Australia's tactics during the fourth innings of the SCG Test really made me curious. Their tactics looked like Australia did not realise what we were doing. They must have thought that we guys were not rotating strike because of injury, but the main reason was one guy cannot move his foot forward and the other one was getting body blows, and then suddenly, it became our strategy."
"Then, what happened was, my back became stiff and I could not move. They made a mistake. If they had pitched it up to me, I might have edged or found it difficult, I feel. They thought to scare us off by hitting us everywhere by bouncing. It worked counterproductively," he added.
AUS v IND 2020-21: WATCH – R Ashwin, Hanuma Vihari reflect on their marathon vigil on Day 5 at SCG
The Australians tried everything they had up their sleeve but to no avail. Skipper Tim Paine started sledging and abusing Ashwin from behind the stumps and that is when the duo knew that Australia had lost it.
"The more beaten I got, the more resolve I got. What more is left to be thrown at me? I got an inner resolve. Add to this, Tim Paine started banter as well. You can take it as you want, but at that point, Vihari and I thought that Australia has lost it," Ashwin said.
